Breaking Barriers

TASP’s impact expands to Native American communities, with hand cycle programs on deck this summer

by JESSE JAMES McTIGUE

The Telluride Adaptive Sports Program (TASP) is a cornerstone of the local nonprofit community. It is widely known for its adaptive ski program — but TASP’s impact extends far beyond the slopes. Like the ripples that form when a stone is thrown in water, TASP’s influence reaches into unexpected places, including regional tribal lands, where it supports Native Americans with disabilities.

In 2021, TASP received a generous grant from the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to help people with spinal cord injuries in underserved and rural communities. Sensing an opportunity to expand TASP’s reach, Executive Director Courtney Stuecheli and Grant Writer Heather Knox, connected with Jason Hotchkiss of Tribal Adaptive, an organization based in Kirtland, New Mexico that uses sports as a tool to improve the health, wellness and independence of Native Americans with disabilities.

It’s a calling that TASP wholeheartedly supports — and one that aligns with their mission to enrich the lives of people with disabilities through outdoor sports.

Tribal Adaptive has successfully offered Native Americans opportunities in traditional sports such as wheelchair basketball, tennis, softball, and track and field. However, exposing people to recreational activities, like those TASP offers, has been difficult.

“It can be pretty challenging for someone in a chair to get into the mountains and desert, but interacting and intersecting with the landscape through activities like mountain biking and skiing breaks down barriers in the healing process. We look at it as medicine,” says Hotchkiss.

Over the last four years, with continued funding from a secondary grant from the Craig H. Neilsen Foundation, the two organizations have planned and executed a series of ski and hand cycling camps in Telluride and Moab, Utah.

The adaptive skiing portion of the program gives small cohorts of athletes multiple opportunities to ski with TASP, with the end goal of developing independent skiers.

“There were only two Native American adaptive skiers in the U.S. who were skiing independently before this program,” Hotchkiss says, noting that they are increasing that number with each group. “We want participants to be able to drive up to a mountain and go skiing with their kids or family. We’ve got some logistics to iron out, but with our first cohort, we got about 80 percent there.”

The hand cycling camps are great for community building and connecting people to historic tribal lands and the outdoors. This summer’s programming includes an overnight bike trip at Dead Horse Point outside Moab, and other multi-day mountain bike trips around Telluride.

Stuecheli, who has worked with the group since the initial program offering in 2021, describes it as “truly one of the most rewarding projects I’ve ever worked on.”

“There’s great community building in camping,” Hotchkiss says. “Setting up a tent and doing dishes are great for promoting independent living. It’s good for people with disabilities in all the ways it’s good for people without disabilities.”

Hotchkiss also notes the far-reaching ripple effect of this collaboration.

“Indian country is so connected through social media,” he says. “These stories have so much impact between tribes. We’re getting calls from people who didn’t know this was possible.”